Computer-Savvy Patients Hack Medical Devices to Customize Them

​Frustrated by the slow pace of medical device approvals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), computer-savvy patients and their families are devising new ways to modify devices, like insulin pumps, they use at home, according to a September 26, 2014, Wall Street Journal article. The article describes patients who have hacked their devices to be run from their laptops and made other modifications, including a father who modified his daughter's blood glucose monitor to upload its data to the Internet in a format viewable on his smartwatch.